


Taylor Hebert Joins the EDF

by CapLaPorte



Category: Earth Defence Force (Video Games), Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Crackfic?, EDF5, this is so dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28309824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapLaPorte/pseuds/CapLaPorte
Summary: Something goes wrong as Taylor is going through one of Doormaster's portals a few months after the Gold Morning, and she ends up in a world facing a similarly apocalyptic situation, albeit with a very, very different attitude. Oneshot.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Taylor Hebert Joins the EDF

Taylor groaned as her face ground against the concrete beneath her as she slowly returned to consciousness. What the Hell had happened? She made to roll over onto her back, but quickly abandoned the attempt at a strong wave of nausea. The cold ground would have to do for now. Ugh, what was the last thing she remembered? It wasn’t even a fight, she thought at least. She’d been going through one of Doormaster’s doors, leaving their temporary headquarters when… right. Oh _fuck_. Just as she’d been stepping through… a flash. A _golden_ flash, and a spray of viscera from where their teleporter, and the only thing holding their logistics together, had been standing.   
  
The portal must have closed, or malfunctioned, or maybe the building was just destroyed and she was under a thousand tons of concrete and steel right now. Taylor let out another long groan. Finally, she propped her elbow onto the ground, and forced herself up against her muscles pained protests. Bits of concrete rubble stayed pushed into her cheek until she roughly scraped them off against her shoulder. Little by little, she opened her eyes.  
  
There wasn’t- _Huh_. Well, she was outside, at least, and not trapped under a building. So the portal had worked-ish. But where did she end up? She shifted her weight back and sat down on the sidewalk she’d appeared on. Well, easiest way to find out would be to reach out to her bugs and get a feel for the surroundings. With less than a conscious thought, she did so.  
  
None responded.  
  
She frowned and tried again.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Huh? Maybe Scion had specifically tried to counter her by slaughtering bugs en masse? Not that her bugs were doing all that much- or anything at all- to him in the first place. It didn’t make any sense. She could _feel_ her power, still present, an ebbing and growing pulselike thing in her head, but _nothing_ was responding to her.   
  
This wasn’t good, whatever _this_ was. Even the bugs in her suit were dead, crushed on impact, presumably, and without any bugs, her abilities were… Well. Useless, but that didn’t mean _she’d_ be useless, she just had to figure out where she was, and how to get back to the others. Taylor nodded to herself, glad to have a course of action, and pushed herself to her feet.   
  
First impressions: extremely not Brockton Bay. Second impressions: Scion must have already been through here. Or… maybe not? Hold on, what she was seeing now wasn’t jibing with what she had seen in areas Scion had torn through before. No deep gouges through the ground, entire swathes of parkland were still green and filled with trees, and the buildings… well. _Some_ were still standing, but those that weren’t were what worried her. All cleanly demolished, as if by an incredibly careful crew, no fallen wreckages, just bits of rebar and piles of rubble, exactly squared away in each building’s footprint.   
  
This was… _weird_. Even for how fucked up life had gotten in the past few months, this was fucking _weird._ The sky was as overcast as she remembered, but something about the atmosphere just didn’t feel the same. Just where on Earth had she ended up? It was as she pondered this question that a tech clad tinker flew by.  
  
Taylor blinked once, and then immediately tried to burst into a jog while shouting, “Hey! Lady! Over here!”   
  
But of course, the woman’s power suit (as much as it could be called that, she didn’t get a _great_ look but something about it seemed… skimpy?) was clearly noisy, and had drowned her out. She was just surprised that the tinker hadn’t noticed her at all during her approach, surely most of them implement infrared goggles and stuff into their visors?  
  
Ah well, at least that meant there were other parahumans around, which meant she could find a way back to the front lines, sooner or later. Doormaster’s death would be a blow. Potentially a deadly one, but hopefully enough people would survive to mount… some kind of resistance. Taylor sighed and leaned against a piece of concrete foundation jutting out of the ground. The odds of anyone making it out after Doormaster bit it were incredibly low. Shit, who had been there? Was Lisa… no, no she’d been on a trip back to Earth Gimel, she was safe, hopefully for good, unless Gimel was the next alternate Earth on Scion’s shitlist.   
  
Her thoughts were interrupted by a rumbling reverberating through the concrete she was leaning on, quickly joined by the combined noise of a dozen loud engines, along with a rhythmic… crunching? Stomping? It was coming from down the road behind her, so cautiously, Taylor peeked around the edge of her piece of debris…  
  
And was dumbstruck. A full military convoy was rumbling down the road towards her, something she hadn’t seen since… well, since she’d been shuffled around the world as Weaver, she supposed. Something was… off, though. None of the equipment was anything she recognized, from the chunky tanks to the suspiciously lightly equipped infantry. Oh, and then there were the several story tall mechs stomping alongside the tanks. The mechs didn’t even _look_ like Tinkertech, they looked straight up mass produced, which unless some mad tinker with a secret lab _and_ a secret army suddenly had an epiphany of their conscience, _didn’t make any sense_. Scion had _targeted_ all of the factories and wreaked enough havoc that most country’s militaries were non-factors, so what was a conventional looking military convoy doing here?  
  
Though… the more Taylor looked at it, the less and less ‘conventional’ it seemed, even beyond the mechsuits. For one, she noticed a bunch more soldiers wearing that tinkertech flight suit flying overhead (she was sure it didn’t qualify as a powersuit now that she saw it a bit closer) that the first girl she’d seen was wearing. In fact, they were all women too. With bared midriffs. And thighs. And… hotpants? Were those hotpants military issue? What the fuck? And lagging just behind the slightly more normal looking infantry, were lumbering, heavy looking figures putting cracks in the concrete with each step, completely encased what definitely _was_ power armour, and holding absolutely _absurdly_ long and massive cannons and gatling guns. She was pretty sure one of them had a pair of cannons that were each twice as long as she was tall.   
  
All Taylor could think as they got closer was that it must have been some tinker’s private army, there was no other explanation. She was also nearly one hundred percent sure they would all be destroyed nigh-instantly by Scion. Well, hopefully they could get her a ride out of here before that happened.  
  
One of them, an infantryman who’s uniform had different colours than the rest (blue and orange, Taylor noted), caught sight of her. She couldn’t see his eyes through his helmet’s visor, but she felt his gaze for a few seconds, before he turned to a few other soldiers- his subordinates?- said something, then started jogging away from the formation towards her. Taylor shrugged to herself, then pushed off of the building and started limping her way over to meet him.   
  
“You there! Civilian! Why didn’t you evacuate!?” He shouted much sooner than Taylor was expecting, and also _much_ louder. Despite the distance, it was like his voice cut right through the din of the convoy, crisp, clean, and authoritative. Though there was something weird about his tone, not that Taylor was going to judge.  
  
“Ya I’m not-” She started to say, before instantly realizing it was futile until he got closer. A moment later, she tried again. “I’m not a Civilian, I’m with the Protectorate, who do you work for?”  
  
“Protectorate?!” The soldier said, cocking his head. “I’ve never heard of that, but we’re with the Earth Defense Force, and this area isn’t safe! We need to get you out of here!”  
  
Taylor blinked. Earth Defense Force? She didn’t know about… anyone going by that. More to the point though, “Wait, not safe? Is Scion on his way here?”  
  
“No!” He shouted. “It’s flying teleportation ships! They’re bringing giant monsters to try and take control of the area!”  
  
Taylor blinked. Again. Flying teleportation ships and giant… monsters? Was Scion trying his hand at tinkering? Had Simurge turned on them now that Lisa was stranded on Earth Gimel? “Uh, well if you know where there’s any bu-”  
  
“Look! Over there!” One of the soldiers in the convoy interrupted her, pointing into the distance.   
  
“Oh God!” Another cried, “It’s those aliens!”  
  
“They must be the advance unit!” One with a gravelly voice shouted.  
  
Taylor turned slowly to look, and for the second time since she’d woken up, was dumbstruck. A massive, golden, flying… _spaceship_ with six cylindrical vats had flown into view while she wasn’t looking. Something humanoid and _huge_ was inside the vats.   
  
“Civilian!” The man who’d originally spoken to her got her attention. “I know you want to be in a safe place, and I wish I could help! But this war is just too dangerous! There might be nowhere left on Earth that’s safe!”  
  
“I… uh-” Taylor tried to respond, but the man barrelled on.  
  
“So when nowhere left on Earth is safe, you have no choice, but to fight! Here, take this!” He started to hand her the massive, sci-fi looking weapon he was holding, before pausing, and quickly gripping it back to himself. “Wait! No, only _I_ can use the Blazer! Take this instead!”  
  
And then he handed her a rocket launcher that she could fit inside of with room. Where did he even get it? And more importantly, why was she lifting it over her shoulder oh god she had a rocket launcher.   
  
He clasped a hand on her stump shoulder that didn’t have a bigger rocket launcher than any she had ever seen on it. “I know it’s scary, Civilian. But I _will_ protect you! All you have to do is fight and survive! By the way, you can call me ‘Sarge’!”  
  
Taylor was still trying to take in the massive vat spaceships as all this happened. What in the fuck was going on? Why was this rocket launcher so light? _Sarge_? Hold on, is that an _ammo counter_? How can this rocket launcher hold 36 rockets?  
  
That, of course, was when the bottoms of the vats on the spaceships flipped open on hinges, and the giant frogmen with laser cannons fell out to the ground beneath them.  
  
 _Huh._  
  
A good third of the grown, adult soldiers screamed in terror at the sight.  
  
“Oh no! They look just like humans!” Taylor heard one of them yell. Which honestly confused her more than anything that had been said so far, and that was saying something. They were… they were clearly giant, bipedal frogs. Their skin was green (or red, she spotted a couple red ones). They didn’t look anything like humans.  
  
But, of course, Sarge stepped up next to her, his mouth set in a grim line, nodding solemnly. “They have two feet, two arms, and they can use firearms just like humans! But they also see with two eyes! You can use that against them, Civilian, if you hide behind the buildings!”  
  
Taylor hefted the rocket launcher she was somehow holding on her shoulder with a single arm. “I’ll- uh…” She _thought_ he was asking her to flank the frogmen? “I’ll go and do that… then, uh, Sarge.”  
  
“Good, Civilian! And take this too!” He procured a headset out of fucking nowhere that she awkwardly accepted after putting down her rocket launcher. “Now we can communicate across the battlefield!” Sarge shouted in her ear after she donned it.  
  
“Great…” Taylor replied with a weak smile.  
  
Sarge then turned on his heel and started jogging to catch up to the rest of his soldiers, shouting something about ‘powered exoskeletons.’ Taylor hefted the rocket launcher, started walking towards the buildings Sarge had pointed out, and then stopped.   
  
What the _fuck_ was she doing!?  
  
 _Scion_ was out there, obiterating entire swathes of countries, killing millions or _billions_ of people, and she just got conscripted by some guy in a blue and orange helmet to fight giant frogmen? What the fuck was going on? And more to the point, _where were all the bugs_?! How could there not be a single fly, a single god damn _earthworm_ in the dirt of the park she was standing next to?!  
  
Growling, Taylor turned to go back to Sarge and _demand_ some kind of transportation, when she saw what was happening to the soldiers. They were being _blasted_ with some kind of energy from the frogmen’s enormous guns, it was turning the ground around them to literal _glass_ and they, even just the normal looking soldiers like Sarge were just… shrugging it off. Or trying to combat roll out of the way. Even the flying chicks in hotpants were occasionally taking hits.  
  
She watched one of the infantrymen, an unassuming looking man in drab grey armour, take out a grenade launcher which he promptly fired a massive spread of what looked to be around thirty grenades from. And then he fired it twice more. It took Taylor a moment to stop gawping at the sheer destruction the single man had unleashed, dozens of buildings levelled, dozens of square meters of ground blackened by the explosions, and… two dead frogmen. Of like, twenty.   
  
Taylor decided she’d rather try flanking than getting into that.  
  
So, adrenaline washing away the aches in her body, she started jogging towards the wall of short storefronts that would hopefully hide her from the frogmen. She tried to keep one eye on the ongoing battle as she ran, one of the Earth Defense Force’s tanks got blown up, but the crew (a single, fully armoured infantryman) managed to bail out just in time. One of the mechs, or, uh, ‘powered exoskeletons’ she supposed, seemed to have massive shotguns mounted on it’s shoulders, which it used to great effect until it seemingly ran out of ammunition, and the Sarge’s scifi weapon turned out to be some kind of beam rifle that absolutely _melted_ through frogmen that were close enough.   
  
Her observations were interrupted by the radio being transmitted to her over the headset opening a channel. “Attention everyone, _this_ is the _Chief Commander_ of the EDF.” A deep voice that Taylor could only describe as melodramatic crackled through. “The situation, is _not good._ More and more aliens leading giant monsters have taken control of the countryside, and over 30% of the total population, is dead.” Wait. Total population of the country? Or the Earth? He _is_ the Chief Commander of the ‘Earth Defense Force,’ since that’s probably what EDF means, so maybe the Earth? “Even if many people have died, many more will die too, if we don’t _stand_ , and _fight_. I know the battles will be hard, but we, have _got what it takes_ , to beat these _alien invaders!_ ” And then the channel closed. Nice of him to take the time out of his day to say absolutely nothing to, presumably, the entire organization. What the god damn fuck was actually going on with these people.  
  
Taylor put those thoughts on hold as she neared her flanking position. Huh, some of the storefronts seemed to have Japanese on them, was she in Japan? That’s quite a ways off course. The Sarge and his soldiers all sounded American, but she supposed the Earth Defense Force would be an international organization. She stepped towards the alley carefully, quietly, all of the frogmen were still occupied with the EDF ground units. She had no idea what kind of rockets were in this thing, nor how it could possibly hold thirty six of them, but she had nothing else at her disposal.  
  
So, she aimed through the conveniently user-friendly aiming port (didn’t these usually have distance indicators or zeroing?) at the largest concentration of frogmen, and pulled the trigger. Before she could react, six of the thirty six rockets in the weapon had been loosed towards the frogs.  
  
They turned in what seemed like slow motion at the sound, froggy faces giving off an expression- which Taylor would admit was actually somewhat humanlike- of surprise. And then they exploded into purple gore.   
  
“Holy shit,” Taylor breathed. The other frogmen were taking notice, so she quickly pivoted and took aim at each group, one by one.   
  
_BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM  
  
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM_  
  
Holy shit blowing up enormous alien frogmen was incredibly fun. Maybe it was the past few months of fighting a losing battle against an invincible, overpowered alien _God_ , but fighting these enormous frogmen had Taylor grinning with exhilaration, something about it was just so _intensely_ satisfying. Yeah, she’d take frogmen over alien Gods any day.  
  
Now that she had flanked them, it took only a few more minutes for the EDF to mop the frogmen up, and for her to meet back up with Sarge.  
  
“That was impressive work, Civilian!” He shouted, both through the radio and at her physically. “You should think about joining the EDF! We could _use_ people like you!”  
  
One of the soldiers behind Sarge pumped his fist in the air. “Yeah! Being a soldier is awesome! E! D! F!”  
  
All of the men and women behind _that_ soldier took up the cry together. “E! D! F!”  
  
Taylor nodded slowly, carefully turning her gaze back to Sarge. “Riiiight… I’ll think about it.” Sarge gave her a particularly manic grin and nodded back.   
  
“Good! Now-”  
  
Taylor cut him off this time. “Do you know why there’s no insects around here?”  
  
He paused in very visible confusion. “Insects?”  
  
“Uh, y’know, like bugs?”  
  
“Bugs? This is no time for games and made up words, Civilian!”  
  
Taylor was about to protest when that same soldier that had spotted the giant frogmen from earlier shouted, “the ground! It’s- It’s shaking!!”  
  
The gravelly voiced one laughed. “Relax, it’s just an earthquake.”   
  
“No…” Another one said. “Look! Giant Monsters!”  
  
Taylor cocked an eyebrow and turned where he was pointing. It was the park she had passed earlier. Giant clumps of sod and Earth were being tossed into the sky by… something. What, they were coming from above _and_ below? More frogmen? She was just bringing her rocket launcher to bear when the first ‘giant monster’ came into view through the cloud of dirt.  
  
It was an ant.  
  
A giant ant the size of a train car, but an ant nonetheless. Immediately, eagerly, Taylor reached out with her power-  
  
And took control of it as easily as a normal sized ant. _“Holy shit…”_ She muttered.  
  
Beside her, Sarge nodded, not catching her meaning. “Aggressive Species Alpha, be careful civilian! They shoot acid! If you’re hit by acid, you’re a goner!”  
  
Immediately, she spread her awareness to the full grouping of surfaced giant insects, taking control of the whole swathe of them. “This is… insane.” She whispered to herself. They were just like normal ants, simple, easy to control, but they had _infinitely_ more brain tissue that they just… weren’t utilizing. The best comparison she could think of was like their brains were running minesweeper on _supercomputers_. Her own mind was already alight with all the possibilities this entailed. And then the EDF started shooting at them!  
  
“Wait! Wait wait wait!!” Taylor yelled, jumping in front of them and waving her arms.  
  
“Huh, Civilian!? Those are Giant Monsters!” Sarge yelled.  
  
So these have been attacking the EDF with the frogmen? Taylor realized she’d have to play this carefully. “I have… a special technology, in, uh, my suit, that lets me control them. I was out here to… test it, but I got separated from my guards.” She wasn’t a huge fan of outright lying like this, it’s hard to keep track of falsehoods sometimes, and they tend to need you to dig in deeper than you _can_ keep track of.   
  
“So you’re already a member of the EDF? I knew you were too good to be a Civilian!” Or not, huh. “What branch are you a member of?”  
  
“I’m… a secret member.” She hedged.  
  
Sarge stared at her for a moment, making her sweat. “Very peculiar! Well if you can control the Giant Monsters, then we may have a fighting chance! Can you make them shoot acid?!”  
  
Taylor obliged, melting a nearby Subaru into a mushy paste.  
  
“Incredible! With you on our side, we can push back the Hostile Forces! Let’s go!” He shouted, and took off running in a seemingly random direction. Taylor stared after him for a moment, thinking. Something was off, she was fairly sure she wasn’t even on Earth-Bet anymore, and even if she somehow still was, that meant there was an entirely separate end of the world going on that she was specifically, uniquely qualified to help with. Scion… she felt a pang of guilt, but forced it down, comforting herself with the thought that at least Lisa was safe. The others could deal with Scion, maybe for now she’d stick with the EDF. A giant, red ant came over and kneeled next to her, letting her clamber on and find a good seat among it’s segmented body. Then, she shrugged once, and the ant set off after the Sarge, the horde following behind her kicking up a plume of dirt in it’s wake.

Yes, _this_ she could get used to.


End file.
